Susereum: Towards a Reward Structure for Sustainable Scientific - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Susereum: Towards a Reward Structure for Sustainable Scientific Research Software

Omar Badreddin1, Wahab Hamou-Lhadj2, Swapnil Chauhan1

1 University of Texas El Paso 2 Concordia University

• Research has become inescapably Software-Dependent
• Developers of Research Software are

– Untrained in Software Engineering – Transient Workforce – Adopt Discovery Driven Methodologies – Develop in absence of Requirements

• Research Projects are

– Driven by scientific contribution – Have short funding cycles

Background

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• Academic careers

– Advanced by contributions of academic articles – Research software are not adequately recognized

• Little incentives to contribute high-quality research codes
• Academic eco system are dependent on peer reviews

– Effective for static relatively short artifacts (papers) – Ineffective for large dynamic text (codes)

Academic Eco-Systems

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• Software Sustainability is not unique to research software
• Professional spheres systematically undermine sustainability
• Prevalent practices

– Reward engineers for feature development – Sustainability is uncertain and invisible – Systematic pressures to short-term goals

Sustainability Fundamental Challenge

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Omar Badreddin

Dev Cost: $309.5 million Cost to fix (in Year 1

• nly): $402 million

Omar Badreddin

How to Address Sustainability

• Training and Education for Researchers and Scientists
• Policies and research funding structures

– Hiring professional software engineers

• Understand the unique context and quality characteristics of research software.

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• The goal of this research is to transform the prevalent incentive

structures in academia.

• We aim to establish an ecosystem that systematically promotes

contributions of scientific software. Software that is:

– Sustainable over time to maximize returns – Disseminatable to other researchers for results extension – Reproducible for research results extension. – Attain broader longer-term impacts

Research Goal

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• Susereum = Sustainability + Ether.
• Distributed Ledger
• Reward contributors of research codes with immutable,

permanent, peer-recognized credit.

Susereum

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Code Commit Quantify Scientific Value Award Crypto Credit (Suse) Peers Researcher Define & validate

Susereum

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Step One Code Change Event

Susereum

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Step Two Transaction Formation

Susereum

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Step Three Block Formation

Susereum

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Step Four Chain Formation

Susereum

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Step Five Chain Propagation to Peers

Susereum

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Step Six Peers Verify Work

Consensus Protocol

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Potential Impact

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• Open Source and Professional Spheres
• Scientific and Research Software
• Discovering and Sharing of Novel Sustainability Measures
• Decentralized Sovereignty and Impacts Beyond Software

Sustainability

– Redefine development process, artifacts formalisms, conflict resolutions for artifacts, .. – Project task priorities, schedule, task assignments, effort estimates,.. – Rewards for crowd-based software engineering

Omar Badreddin

Open Questions

• To what extent do “Incentives” affect codebase quality and sustainability?
• How to measure the scientific value of code contributions?
• How to quantify codebase sustainability?
• Analyzing large-scale research codebases

– QGIS case Study – Interviewing Developers – Uncover decision making processes for individuals and teams

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Summary

Restructure Incentives with Crypto Credit Significant Potential Impact on Software Sustainability Decentralization of Sovereignty

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